The morning after their night of passionate lovemaking, Rearden is angry. He regards sex as a low impulse of the flesh, and he feels contemptuous of Dagny (and especially himself) for craving “obscene” pleasures. Dagny rejects his scorn, because she regards sex with Rearden as noble—something to be proud of. She tells him joyously that she makes no other claims on him but this: When he seeks to satisfy this “lowest” of his bodily urges, he must bring his urges to her.
James Taggart meets an innocent shop girl who is star-struck by his fame. Cherryl Brooks came from a poor family and moved to New York because she wanted more from life. She admires achievement and believes that Jim—along with Dagny and Rearden—is responsible for the success of the John Galt Line. Taggart takes a perverse pleasure in her misguided hero worship. Around this time, Taggart’s flunky, Wesley Mouch, is appointed Top Coordinator of the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources.
Dagny and Rearden take a vacation together, driving through the countryside. In Wisconsin, they visit the former site of the Twentieth Century Motor Company, looking for machine tools. In the research lab of the factory, they find the abandoned remnant of a motor that was designed to take static electricity from the atmosphere and convert it into usable energy. They’re shaken to find a motor that would have revolutionized industrial production lying rejected on a scrap heap. Dagny and Rearden are determined to find the inventor.
